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Fenton Johnson: Poems and Author Profile

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Fenton Johnson (1888-1958) was born and raised in Chicago in a middle-class family. He briefly attended Northwestern  University before completing a Bachelor's degree at the University of Chicago. Johnson also attended the Columbia University Pulitzer School of Journalism. Johnson also briefly taught at a private college in Louisville, Kentucky and lived in New York City for a few years during the 1910s. 

Johnson published three collections of poetry in the 1910s, including A Little Dreaming (1913), Visions of the Dusk (1915), and Songs of the Soil (1916). 

Johnson also submitted a manuscript for publication to a New York publisher, A Wild Plaint, in 1908. The manuscript was rejected, but recently recovered and digitized by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. The digitized manuscript of A Wild Plaint can be viewed in page image format here. 

Songs of the Soil was reviewed in Poetry Magazine in June 1917. The issue of Poetry where the review was published can be found here.

Through the 1910s, Johnson endeavored to start magazines, including a magazine called The Champion (1916), focused on examples of successful Black folks in the arts and athletics. He later started a second magazine called The Favorite (1918-1920). He later indicated that all of the writing in The Favorite was produced by himself, though he used a variety of pennames to suggest other authors were involved. Both magazines quickly failed, and Johnson re-published several of the short stories he wrote for The Favorite in a collection of short stories called Tales of Darkest America.   A single full issue of The Favorite is available at HathiTrust.

Johnson published several poems in predominantly white modernist poetry magazines in the 1910s and 20s, including Poetry and Others: 

Contents of this path:

  1. Fenton Johnson, "Tired" (1919)
  2. Poems by Fenton Johnson in "The Book of American Negro Poetry" (1922)
  3. Fenton Johnson, "A Little Dreaming" (Full Text) (1913)
  4. Fenton Johnson, "Visions of the Dusk" (Full text) (1915)
  5. Fenton Johnson, "Songs of the Soil" (1916) (Full text)
  6. Fenton Johnson, "Tales of Darkest America" (1920) (Full Text)
  7. Fenton Johnson, "The Servant" (1912) (short fiction)
  8. Fenton Johnson, "Children of the Sun" (1913)
  9. Fenton Johnson, "The Mulatto's Song" (1913)
  10. Fenton Johnson, "Swinburne" (1913)
  11. Fenton Johnson, "Douglass" (1915)
  12. Fenton Johnson, "Dunbar" (1913)
  13. Fenton Johnson, "Ethiopia" (1915)
  14. Fenton Johnson, "S. Coleridge Taylor" (1915)
  15. Fenton Johnson, "The Soul of Boston" (1915)
  16. Fenton Johnson, "Slave Death Song" (1915)
  17. Fenton Johnson, "Soldiers of the Dusk" (1915)
  18. Fenton Johnson, "The Passing Indian" (1915)
  19. Fenton Johnson, "The Creed of the Slave" (1915
  20. Fenton Johnson, "War Profiles" (1918)
  21. Fenton Johnson, "The Lost Love" (1918)
  22. Fenton Johnson, "How Long, O Lord!" (1918)
  23. Fenton Johnson, "Who Is That A-Walking in the Corn?" (1918)
  24. Fenton Johnson, "Tired" (1919)
  25. Fenton Johnson, "Aunt Jane Allen" (1919)
  26. Fenton Johnson, "Aunt Hannah Jackson" (1919)
  27. Fenton Johnson, "The Banjo Player" (1919)
  28. Fenton Johnson, "The Drunkard" (1919)
  29. Fenton Johnson, "The Minister" (1919)
  30. Fenton Johnson, "The Scarlet Woman" (1919)
  31. Fenton Johnson, "The Barber" (1919)
  32. Fenton Johnson, "A Dream" (1921)
  33. Fenton Johnson, "The Wonderful Morning" (1921)
  34. Fenton Johnson, "The New Day" (1922)
  35. Fenton Johnson, "Sweet Love O' Dusk" (1927)
  36. Fenton Johnson, "The Marathon Runner" (1927)
  37. Fenton Johnson, "Puck Goes to Court" (1927)
  38. Fenton Johnson, "The Mother o' Dusk and Her Babe" (1928)
  39. Robert Kerlin, Chapter 2.3 "A Group of Singing Johnsons" (James W. Johnson, Fenton Johnson, Adolphus Johnson, Charles B. Johnson)

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